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and to this present state of public taste for reading we may ascribe the immense bulk of light reading which issues from the press, as To all manufactures are in proportion to the wants of the market. it also we may ascribe that laxity of morals which blots with foul disgrace the history of our republic.

Let us no longer compound pure literature, which is a just and beautiful painting, with those senseless and mutilated daubs with which the book shops abound. Let nothing be termed literary which does not come within the definition, and thus we shall ac cord a greater distinction to works of real merit, have a more beautiful and tangible standard of taste, and repel with just neglect the approaches of all the immoral and ignorant unfortunates who are crowding to gain our applause.

RECOLLECTIONS.

Many years had passed away since I had seen my native place, M-, a country town in New England. Business had kept me at a distance; and though I had always been resolved to visit the place once more, yet I had again and again broken my resolution, half longing and half dreading to test my recollections by the reality. At last, as I was whizzing past on the railroad, about twenty miles from M, I resolved (and this time I kept my resolution,) to see how the old place looked.

It was noon when I drove up to the M- tavern, and the old meeting-house bell was ringing for twelve o'clock. A joyful sound was that in schoolboy days to my ears. Even when they still tingled for blundering recitations, the first stroke of the bell cured the pain like a charm. It was the signal for "school's dismissed." Who cared then, though the hair pulled from the eyelash had failed of its magic, and the ferule had descended and risen, and descended again, unbroken? Who cared then, though the reddened palm still smarted, or though for defaults of the head the other extremity was still suffering? For two hours we were free, and a shout proclaimed our freedom. Just such a shout greeted me, and made my heart leap, as I stepped out of the stage. I could have shouted too, only the lookers on would have thought me mad.

They had not a much better opinion of me, when they saw me, without entering the tavern, walk directly over to the meetinghouse. The same half of the same double door stood open, and the same large key was in the keyhole, as in former times. The last stroke of the bell, with a swinging sound, was dying into silence in the air above me. The sexton had just finished ringing,

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and was hitching up the end of the bell rope on a nail in the porch. I told him I would lock up; and he trusted my honest looks and left me alone. I closed the outer door, and then, as I stood in the dim light of that quiet porch, hearing nothing but the faint, lingering hum of the bell in the steeple above me, thoughts crowded upon me till I could have wept. Here, when a boy, I had come, Sunday after Sunday, and felt inyself well rewarded for the labors of the week, by the pleasure of having a cent to put into the "poor-box," which was fastened by the inner door. And now, with a sad smile at my folly, I dropped a cent into that same poorbox to try if I could feel the same pleasure. The cent rattled down into its empty receptacle, but the charm was gone; and, in spite, I muttered a wretched pun that the box was a very poor one unless the congregation were more liberal than formerly. But there was no one to laugh at the joke, and so I felt ashamed of it; especially when I remembered old blind Sally, who used to struggle hard with poverty, hand to hand, for her living, and yet would always save enough to put a cent into the box every month.

For sometime I held in my grasp the handle of the inner door, almost fearing to open it, lest improvement should have changed the interior. A weight still kept the door closed, as in former times; and as I opened it, the cord creaked over the pulley with a sound which I should have recognized amid the noise of Broadway. It seemed as if I should meet the inquiring eyes of a disturbed congregation; but there was not a creature there to look at me, except a lean mouse which was nibbling his dinner off from a Bible cover. The sacrilegious little fellow evidently felt himself at home in the meeting-house on week days, for he only gave me a look and then returned to his devotions. It was so that the congregation used to look every Sunday at Capt. Hepstaff, as he slowly opened the door and displayed its musical powers in their perfection. The Captain had been a seaman for many years, and by his many struggles with the obstinate winds and waves, had acquired no small portion of their obstinacy. After he had settled in our village, there was on one occasion a dispute as to the hour at which meeting should commence in the morning. The Captain liking, as he said, to take a snooze on Sunday morning, was strongly in favor of eleven o'clock; but the majority of the villagers preferred half past ten, and the Captain had to yield. Or rather without his yielding, they had their way and he his. While others went to meeting at the toll of the bell, he regularly went half an hour later, entering generally at the end of the second prayer. Priding himself on his punctuality, he was very exact in his tardiness, always opening the door on the stroke of eleven. To have failed for one instance in this would have given him more mortification than, in his younger days, to have run his ship ashore in pleasant weather.

I let the door slam. The mouse, frightened from his meal, whisked himself over the side of the pew and disappeared. I was

alone in the old, familiar meeting-house. Every pillar and window and pew gave me a sober welcome. There was none of the grandeur or even of the beauty of architecture in the edifice. Where the builder had attempted ornament, the attempt would have provoked a smile from a fastidious taste. But uncouth and contracted as the building was, and little as its pillars possessed of Corinthian grace or Doric simplicity, there was in it a charm and awe to my mind which no spacious cathedral, rich in all the splendor of Gothic arches and stained windows, could ever possess. It was a democratic building. The architect must have thought of the motto, sol omnibus lucet; and have been unwilling that any family should, in this edifice, be deprived of the rays of that luminary. There was no partiality; every side pew had its window. It seemed to me, as I stood and looked around, that the windows had multiplied; but I counted them, and the number was correct; ten below and ten above on each side, and nine in the end. Surely the congregation did not "love darkness rather than light.” How often, in boyhood, when the preacher's voice grew tedious, as he commenced the seventh head of his discourse, had I, in utter weariness, counted those windows; and then, perhaps, the panes of glass in each window. I knew the very number still; twenty in each sash. How often had I risen in my mathematical calculations, and computed the number of panes in the whole building; always excepting those in the arched window behind the minister, which was constantly covered with a green paper curtain. Many a Sunday had I resolved that the next morning I would make an examination from the outside, and discover how many panes were hidden by that provoking curtain. But, as usual, Monday's duties put to flight Sunday's resolutions, and the question was never settled.

Before me, to an awful height, rose the pulpit; a structure which, by its resemblance in shape to a wine glass, might shock a modern temperance man. On Sunday afternoons, in olden times, it is said that the resemblance extended to the contents as well as to the shape. It was so small and high that when the minister took his seat it seemed to the audience as if be had dropped through an unexpected trap door; and when he rose his reappearance was like the popping up of a witch out of a child's toy-box. Over it still hung the ponderous sounding hoard, great source of youthful wonder and dread. Would it not, as it slowly vibrated on a windy day, would it not sometime fall on the preacher, like an extinguisher upon a candle in the holy candlestick of the Temple; or entrap him like a rabbit in a figure-of-four? Or as he stretched himself over the front of the pulpit, and with a hearty thump clenched the third head of his sermon, might not the sounding board give way and catch both him and his sermon by the middle? Such a calamity, even if possible, never occurred, and the huge teapot cover was still hanging, unshaken by all the many prayers which, like incense, had curled their way around its edges

to the sky. Once in my childhood I had mounted those steps, as if they had been Jacob's ladder, and standing in that sacred place had peered on tiptoe over the side, and looked with awe at the well pounded Bible. And now more sadly, but, I fear, with less reverence, I slowly mounted the same steps, first laying my hat, with a clerical air, on the communion table below. I stood in the old pulpit, and looked down on the empty seats. As I looked, they were full.

There before me in the gallery sit the choir, base, tenor, alto and treble; the young men with faces red with the awkwardness of starched collars-the girls in all the consciousness of bright ribbons and blooming cheeks. In the centre, "Uncle Jabez," the leader, armed with his pitchpipe, watches them proudly and anxiously, as a general might survey an army before battle. Like a general, too, when he sees that every book is in its place, and every performer is ready, he gives the word of command, not charge," but "sound."

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In the front seat below and almost under the pulpit, sits old deacon A., with his thin grey hair brushed back from his forehead. He is deaf, and scarcely with his ear-trumpet can hear the sermon ; yet, in spite of his deafness and in spite of his age, no hot summer afternoon, nor bleak winter morning, can keep the old man from his wonted place. Beside him is his wife, his partner for a long life, now nearly finished, and, as they hope, for a longer eternity, soon to begin. She finds the hymn for him in the book; and though his sight is scarcely better than his hearing, he holds the book before him and follows the singing. For he knows every hymn by heart; and when his wife has told him the first line through his ear-trumpet, he can join the choir in the tune and the words; and his voice, generally tremulous, is firm when he sings the praises of his Master. Children the aged pair have none living. All have gone before and are waiting for them above. There is the record of many a trial upon their wrinkled faces; but the trials of earth are over for them, and their calm and mild countenances seem to have caught a welcoming ray from heaven.

There at the right is 'Squire D.'s pew, where in his cushioned arm-chair he learns lessons of justice every Sunday from a purer source than Coke or Blackstone. He watches the minister with a keen eye, as if he were an opposing counsel; and, if the village gossip be true, frequently disputes with the parson in the evening the doctrines advanced during the day. His profession has taught him that assertion is not proof.

And so, on every side, are familiar faces of young and old; and among them is one-how well known, how dearly beloved! In that pew, with the yellow cushions, sits a mother and by her is a little boy, her son. Time has interwoven a few silver threads in her hair, and traced a few wrinkles on her face, but the boy loves every wrinkle and every grey hair, and would not have them changed. The boy sits on a bench at her feet, and leans his head

on her lap, and feels her soft hand rest on his warm forehead. He will never hear a sermon half so eloquent as is the pressure of that hand. He will never hear music half so sweet as the tones of her voice, as she joins with that congregation in some old-fashioned tune. Often, from long didactic sermons, do her thoughts wander to their dearest earthly object, and strive, with anxious hope, to penetrate the future, and follow that boy's after life. And now, with the rest of the congregation, the mother and son rise in prayer, and still her loving hand rests on his shoulder. The house is silent, awaiting the first words of the minister

"Mister, dinner is ready."

The congregation disappeared; and there stood before me the staring waiter of the M- tavern, who had been sent to call me to dinner. The mother had long been at rest in her grave, and the son had become a man, and was standing in the pulpit, looking with a moistened eye at the pew where he sat in his boyhood.

THE GRAVE.'

BY S. W. PERRY.

'Tis said the grave is dark, and all
Is calm and quiet there;

And nothing but the darkling worm
That quietness can share.

'Tis said the grave is cold, and ne'er
Sweet flowerets deck the ground,
And nought but sullen cypress waves
That dreary spot around.

Yet why should we so dread the grave,
And shrink with trembling fears?
Or why, when friends within are laid,
Bedew it with our tears?

Released from all life's weary cares,

So tranquilly they lie,

As if they fain would bid us know
How happy 'tis to die.

Within the grave no tears are shed,

No sighs disturb the breast,
But freed from evil days to come,
They take their holy rest.

Though from our view forever hid,
The forms we love so well,

We may not mourn while we can trust
With God their spirits dwell.

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